Ten amazing local fundraisers are assembling teams for a 10-week campaign with just one goal: raising money for kids battling cancer.
One local boy, Aiden Condales,11, was tapped to be the face of the campaign.
"We took him into the emergency room three times, and no one could find anything," Barbie told WPTV in an interview. "Finally, the last time to the ER, as a mom, I felt like it was my duty to say, 'we're not going to leave here until we find out what's going on.'"
That's when they got the news, a diagnosis no mother wants to hear -- Aiden had leukemia.
"To feel you can't protect him from everything, that's crushing for a mom," said Barbie Condales.
The Condales family learned of Adien's diagnosis in May 2018, just after Mother's Day. The news was especially crushing for Barbie.
"My world went upside down. I had to stay strong for him," Condales told WPTV. "But inside, yes, you break down every day, you cry at night."
WPTV caught up with Aiden as he sprinted around a playground in Royal Palm Beach. It seemed a far cry from when he couldn't play with his friends and three brothers after his little legs collapsed at school.
Aiden said he felt "confused, scared," and didn't know what was happening.
Now, he's hoping the fundraiser that he's front and center of will help others. It's the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society Man & Woman of the Year Campaign, a pediatric cancer fundraising drive.
Pam King, Executive Director for the Leukemia Lymphoma Society, was part of the group that selected Aiden to be the face and heart of the drive to help other children take on cancer.
"Once you hear those words: 'you have cancer,' your mind is like crazy," King told WPTV. She was quick to note "the after effects and the treatments kids have to go through are pretty barbaric, so what we're trying to do is find the precision medicine."
The campaign taps people of all backgrounds to work as "ambassadors" and organize local teams.
That's were Cori Beck comes in.
Beck, a Pre-K4 teacher at the Weiss School, was asked to be an ambassador.
"They're so innocent, the struggles that children go through at such young ages is so unfair," Beck said in an interview. "If I can do anything to contribute to them smiling and feeling at ease, then I would put in that effort."
